East Afghanistan's War Shifts (Back) To The Border

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East Afghanistan's War Shifts (Back) To The Border

Once upon a time, the Afghanistan war centered around the country's east, near the border with Pakistan. There, U.S. troops harassed Taliban insurgents and their smattering of al-Qaida allies who crossed from their Pakistani safe havens back into Afghanistan. But as security deteriorated, the war literally went south – refocusing, with new troops and spy gear, on the Taliban's southern Afghanistan strongholds. Commanders in the east, no longer central to the war effort, talked about shutting down insurgent logistics routes and securing key roads and towns.

Welcome back to the future.

Maj. Gen. Daniel Allyn is only 100 days into his command in eastern Afghanistan. But he told Pentagon reporters on Thursday that his "current focus" is on expanding the security bubble around Kabul eastward to "interdict insurgent infiltration along the 450 kilometer Afghanistan-Pakistan border."

It's a mission with delicate politics. The Obama administration doesn't want to see big new counterinsurgency operations in the east, preferring commanders to use drones, air assaults and Afghan forces against Taliban and Haqqani network targets instead of an explosion of new U.S. ground troops.

Allyn insisted he's not waging what the military calls an "economy of force" mission, with insufficient troop levels – though he added a big caveat. "I have the forces that I need to accomplish the mission that I've been given," Allyn said. "Obviously, if there's a desire to accelerate progress, then that creates conditions that might cause me to adjust that estimate."

What he doesn't yet have is the full cooperation of the Pakistani military. Allyn called his relationship with his counterparts on the Pakistani side of the border a "work in progress." Liaison officers assigned to each other's staffs help smooth over the rough patches – and there have been several, as the Pakistanis briefly went radio silent to the U.S. in an apparent protest with the unilateral raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

"We hope to regain some of the momentum that General Campbell was able to build up during the time frame prior to the Osama bin Laden raid," Allyn said, referring to his predecessor.

Not many experts believe that eastern Afghanistan has enough U.S. troops to stanch its descent into instability. Insurgent attacks in the east rose 20 percent last year. As the administration's troop drawdown proceeds, Allyn's bosses will have to shortchange a different part of the country if Allyn ultimately requests more U.S. troops to help hold the east. Allyn conceded that locals have expressed "some anxiety about the departure of coalition troops."

But to make up the numbers, Allyn's got Afghan forces, whom he credited with stopping a big cross-border shipment of ammonium nitrate, the signature component of Afghanistan's homemade bombs. He's got special operations missions on a "nightly basis," holding a steady pace even after the horrific crash that killed a Chinook full of SEALs.

And he said he's starting to see results, with insurgents crossing the Pakistan border in "much smaller groups, because of the efforts of Afghan security forces and coalition forces to deny infiltration." It remains to be seen if that's more than a tactical shift. But the test of Allyn's efforts will be found back where the war used to center – the border.